Kodak ESP 9250 - Performance and Verdict

Summary

Our Score

8/10

User Score

Review Price £170.63

Kodak quotes print speeds of 32ppm for black and 30ppm for colour, presumably both draft speeds, though this isn't made clear. Under test, even when printing draft, these claims appear way off-beam. The maximum speed we got from this machine, when printing a five-page draft text document, was 8.6ppm. This dropped to 4.4ppm printing in normal mode and it only climbed back to 4.9ppm on the 20-page document.

These speeds are not particularly quick, when compared with machines from Epson, HP and Lexmark, and the duplex speed of four sides per minute – a duplexer is standard on the ESP 9250 – looks quite modest.

A colour copy took 32s and a five-page black copy from the ADF finished in 1:26, both of which are fair times, though breaking no records. 15 x 10cm photos took between 39s and 51s, depending on their source, which is comparatively quick.

The quality of the prints you get out of the machine is, as you'd expect, similar to the quality from other all-in-ones in Kodak's range. Black text is clean and generally well formed. Draft text looks similar, though it's grey and there's the occasional missed registration from past to pass of the print heads.

Colour print is also good overall, though there is slight banding apparent in some solid fills and a little haloing around black text. A colour copy lost a little of the colour intensity compared with the original, but is easily good enough for general office use.

Photo prints show natural colours and good levels of detail, though, along with many other printers, some of the detail in shadowed areas is lost. Well up to printing holiday shots, though.

Prices of the two cartridges, the high-yield black and standard colour, has risen slightly since we last looked at a Kodak printer and these differences will, of course, apply to all machines in the range. On the best prices we could find, the ESP 9250 has a black page cost of 2.0p and a colour page cost of 4.3p, both including 0.7p for paper. Even though the cost is slightly higher than before, this is still one of the very cheapest ink-jet printers to run.

Verdict

If you want the confirmed running cost advantages of a Kodak inkjet all-in-one, but still want fax, photo facilities, twin paper sources, and ADF and duplex print, the ESP 9250 can supply the lot for under £200. You need to weigh this against the fact that this machine is not particularly quick to print and there are machines at the same price that can give marginally better print quality on plain and photo papers.